ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Putting Teeth in Grand Jury Reports

Even the best reports issued by the Orange County Grand Jury unfortunately, and all too often, fall into the file-and-forget category. The current panel has a good idea to make that less likely in the future.

Grand juries have no trouble getting attention and results in criminal investigations. They either indict or they don’t. It’s in the non-criminal inquiries that problems arise.

Grand juries too often spend months studying an agency and suggesting improvements, only to see the resulting report left to gather dust. In 1981, the county grand jury found that special districts operated with little notice and even less scrutiny, a formula for trouble. Six years later, another panel repeated many of the same warnings. This year’s disclosures about the free spending in the Santa Margarita Water District show how right the two panels were. Now it’s the FBI and the county district attorney that are looking into the activities of the water district and alleged violations of ethics laws by its two top officials.

Another example is fund raising by fraudulent charities. The 1989 grand jury called for countywide cooperation and tougher laws. Four years later, with still no uniform countywide law, one investigator calls the county the fraud capital of California.

A new grand jury is impaneled every year and spends much of its time reinventing the wheel, treading in the footsteps of predecessors whose reports have been ignored. In some cases a juror volunteers for another term, either to complete tasks or to keep tabs on what happened to recommendations. But that’s an informal system; a formal mechanism would be far better.

Grand jurors have no power to enforce their recommendations. They can hold an agency’s feet to the fire only through publicity, pointing out how long it’s been since their suggestions were made and asking what has been done. The Orange County Grand Jurors’ Assn., made up of those who have served on the panel, recognized the problem of lack of follow-up. It asked the Board of Supervisors to give it the job of tracking recommendations and seeing they were acted on. The board unfortunately said no.

That was in 1977. The problem still exists. The solution could lie with the current grand jury’s suggestion for a new committee to monitor compliance with panel recommendations. Committee members would be past grand jurors, volunteers willing to serve for little or no pay. This time around, the Board of Supervisors should take this idea seriously and act on it.